


Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice

by Dardrea



Series: Dulce Periculum [6]
Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Bretons, Cyrodiil, Dark Brotherhood - Freeform, Dovahkiin - Freeform, Dragonborn (Elder Scrolls), F/M, Finally some actual Skyrim stuff!, Imperial City, Orcs, Orsimer - Freeform, Rated t for language and violence, Set in the Imperial City during the events of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Teratophilia, The Gray Fox - Freeform - Freeform, Thieves Guild, orc boyfriend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 13:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17981924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: Spar's a Breton thief living in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil. The Great War is long done and the Aldmeri Dominion practically run the Empire. Undercurrents of discontent are stirring, war is threatening again in the far corners of the realm, and at some point, even she can't keep ignoring it all. Now master of the Thieves Guild and the grudging symbol of hope for all of the Imperial City's downtrodden, the troubles of the Empire are coming for her, and the price for any misstep could be the life of the man she loves.(Also incomplete and I'd had a vague idea of one more pwp that would have come between the last fic and this one. This one's all plot.)





	Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice

**Author's Note:**

> (If You Seek a Monument, Look Around You)

“A representative of the Skyrim Thieves’ Guild?”

“That’s what the stranger says.”

“And she brought a note from Geirny in Bruma?”

“She did. Geirny said she came with the best references. Unassailable. She is who she says she is and she speaks with the authority of Riften’s Ratway.”

“Is there an authority in the Ratway?”

“—did anyone verify Geirny’s note?”

“Of course, we set Salvius on it. He did his… _thing_ and sent the message and we’ve already heard back. She spoke for it.”

“And we’re still trusting that damned mage—”

“Hist-Father! Frezer, you know—”

“Okay,” Spar said, and the other five stopped and waited for her verdict. She still wasn’t used to that. It had been one thing when voices had fallen silent for the Fox, but it was strange that it still happened, even for the maskless little Breton. She looked at their expectant faces, fellow heads of the Thieves’ Guild here in Cyrodiil.

Frezer, Saleethus, and Vastabe had been with her from the start, and had helped to carve their guild a place from pinch-purses and dusty legends. Gwinlorn had been a late comer, and had been met with some suspicion for the sake of the Bosmers’ close alliance with the Aldmeri Dominion, but he’d proved himself a thief, through and through.

Garnag was the last to have come to them and be given a place at this table, in this council, because he’d brought them valuable contacts in Cheydinhall and Bravil. Unlike the other four he didn’t make the Imperial City his permanent home, and it was only luck he’d been in town and available for this meeting. For this stranger from Skyrim, of all places.

“Nothing good comes from Skyrim,” Frezer muttered, a Redguard, but one who’s family had lived in Cyrodiil for generations. For an avowed thief, he’d been a staunch supporter of the late Emperor Titus.

“No. Nothing good,” she agreed. “But I think we should hear her out. If her references are so strong, we’d be mad to turn down a chance to expand our ventures. I wouldn’t want to go, but to have connections out-of-country where we could send our people who’ve gotten in a little too much hot water? Or pass along goods that are too hot to sell around here, but too valuable to just hold onto?”

“They’re in the middle of a civil war. There are dragons raining fire from the skies—what good is any connection to Skyrim going to be to us?” Vastabe said.

Spar considered it. As a Khajiit, cousin to Spar’s long-time friend Idhasa, and so, she knew, cousin to a family that ran a trading caravan through the wilds between Skyrim’s cities, Vastabe’s knowledge of the situation in Skyrim was likely to be a bit clearer than anyone else at that table.

Saleethus scoffed, his forked tongue flicking between his closed lips. “Fairy stories,” he said. “Metaphors for the ferocity of their war. Dragons aren’t real.”

“Is it useless?” Spar asked Vastabe. “You said your kin had made contact with the Guild up there, didn’t you? Are they so bad off, do you think? Are they likely to only be here to ask for aid?”

“Better they ask at the temple,” Garnag grumbled, crossing his arms. “If she’s come begging ‘aid,’ I say we toss her to the goblins.”

Saleethus and Gwinlorn nodded. Frezer sighed and shook his head.

Vastabe’s ears flicked as she considered and Spar could see her convincing herself. “My cousins say the Guild is doing well…” she admitted. “They’ve taken advantage of the chaos sown by war—and _dragons_ —and reasserted their footholds in all of the major holdings, just as we’ve been doing here. ‘Coin flows to and from them like a river.’ Lucrative for all, in these dark days.”

Spar nodded and looked around. The Khajiit’s words had worked unwilling magic in the rightfully suspicious council. Who among them would balk at a chance to dip into a river of gold? “Then we meet with her,” she said.

* * *

Another Breton woman; Spar had known it but she still felt an instinctive distrust when she entered. She wore war-paint, dye, or possibly a facial tattoo, deep purple-blue streaks that ran down from her eyes to her jaw and neck, and disappeared into the collar of her armor. Like tear tracks.

Her face was hard and scarred around her mouth and her eyes were dark. She was muscular for a female Breton, wide at the shoulder for such a small frame, thick through the arms for her overall slimness—possibly because of the big bow and quiver that Uri said had been surrendered when she’d come into the Guild Hall. Gwinlorn would approve.

Other than the paint/tattoo that marked her as a probably an easterner, from Reach-land, Bangkorai or Wrothgar, the stranger might have passed for Spar’s kin: taller, but not much, with similar dark eyes and short, dark hair, and similar pale skin that, like her own, probably didn’t see much sun. She’d have fit right in with Spar’s cousins.

It didn’t endear the other woman to her.

As one, the council stood to greet her.

“Welcome,” Spar said.

Thieves weren’t much on formalities, not when it came to business. It wasn’t good practice when you never knew how much time you had before you might have to run.

The stranger’s eyes swept the room. Her expression didn’t change but Spar could sense the frown.

“Where’s the Gray Fox?” she said, as though she could tell at a glance that none of them were her.

“Semi-retired, unfortunately,” Vastabe purred, her accent always going thicker when she was speaking with someone new. Idhasa did the same thing.

“I was hoping to speak directly to her.”

“The Fox doesn’t have much to do with the day to day of the guild anymore, I’m afraid,” Frezer said smoothly. “We handle things.”

“But a meeting might be arranged. If our business concludes in a satisfactory manner, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d like the chance to introduce herself.” Spar could tell the stranger wasn’t pleased with the answers she was getting and it piqued her curiosity.

The Reach-woman hadn’t come to the Imperial City to offer an alliance to the Cyrodiilic Thieves’ Guild; she’d come to meet the Gray Fox.

The woman’s gaze settled on Spar for the first time and the coldness of it briefly gave way to a disturbing suspicion. She worried for a moment that she’d tipped her hand, but it wasn’t possible. The mask of the Gray Fox protected itself. Even people who knew her and could watch her put it on and take it off had trouble remembering that _she_ was the Fox. The stranger wouldn’t be able to hold on to her suspicions for long.

“Sabar is your name, isn’t it? Of Whiterun, so Geirny says. You’ve come a long way, friend. Sit. Let’s talk.” Spar gestured to the open seat at the table, between Garnag and Saleethus. With a courteous nod the stranger took her place.

* * *

She let Vastabe and Frezer do most of the bargaining. There was no question in her mind the stranger wasn’t here for this but she had come equipped to make some pleasant offers. If the Skyrim Thieves’ Guild actually followed up on it all, having hosted the stranger would prove very profitable.

There was a genial atmosphere when the meeting was over. Even Garnag seemed pleased in his dour way.

* * *

“You should stay away from her.”

“I want to know why she’s really here.” Spar paced back and forth across their room.

Uri watched her, long-suffering, from the bed. He sat cross-legged, eating an apple. He’d tried to get her to eat but he’d set to it himself when it was clear he’d have a long wait otherwise. He swallowed. “You know why she’s here. She’s here to meet the Fox.”

“But _why?_ ”

The orc tossed his hands. “Why does it matter? You don’t want to be the Gray Fox; you _never_ wanted to be the Gray Fox. You got the Guild going, you gave the street kids and the beggars protection. You’ve created your community of the shadows, and you toppled Shiny Tom. Let the mask rest and the Fox enjoy her retirement. No one needs her now, least of all you.”

“But then why is this stranger here _now?_ Why would a master thief from the Skyrim Guild come all the way to the Imperial City just to meet her?”

He shrugged. “Professional curiosity? Tourism? The Gray Fox is a legend, maybe she just wants to be able to say she’s spoken to her. Leave it alone.”

She turned to face him, triumphant. “If all she wants is to talk, then what’s the danger in indulging her?”

He sighed. “You mean in indulging yourself.”

“That too.”

* * *

Spar shoved the tavern door open and strode in, Uri so close behind her she could feel his breath, warm and steady. He hadn’t wanted her to go.

Garnag, of the “mysterious” past, had confided, orc to orc, that the stranger had the smell of the Brotherhood. In the way of interfering men he’d told Uri to keep an eye on her, as if Spar needed it. Stung pride aside, she wasn’t too unhappy to have Uri there, especially if the other Breton did have anything to do with the Dark Brotherhood.

Respect for each other’s pasts aside, of course she knew where Garnag had come from and how he’d built his connections around Cyrodiil; as long as he followed the rules of the Thieves Guild now she didn’t begrudge him his history. But Garnag’s past was the relic of a different time and a man she believed he no longer was.

It was the Brotherhood of Skyrim that had killed Emperor Titus and there was something about the stranger that made Spar think it wasn’t so unlikely she could have had a part in… just about anything.

Unfortunately Spar never had gotten over her driving curiosity, or the bright lick of excitement she felt creeping into danger.

Uri kept his hand low on her back. She suspected it was as much for his comfort as for hers. While she trusted him beside her, she knew he was less confident that she wouldn’t dash off on some mad hare. He said she was more reckless with the mask and though she wasn’t fool enough to wear it into the public tavern, she was carrying it tucked away in a hidden pocket and she hadn’t, in a very long time.

They’d agreed he would come along as her guard, the big bruiser orc who worked at the docks unloading cargo when the work was available, and as a bouncer at the tavern there when the ships were in. He cut an intimidating figure, ‘Urzahul gro-Yagol’ of Mor Khazgur, the new identity Frezer had arranged for him after Urimmok gro-Ghunzug had been sentenced to death by the Thalmor.

He’d grown his hair out from his warrior style and only shaved the sides now, and he bound it in a tail at the back of his head. He had a beard, which she liked but he didn’t. He thought he looked disreputable, which was the point. She thought he looked like the only home she could remember wanting to return to.

Deciding she didn’t care what the assassin-thief from Skyrim thought, she reached behind her to clasp his hand in hers and give it a squeeze. It wasn’t exactly a secret from anyone who paid attention that they were a couple and had been for eight years, ever since Urzahul had ‘come to town.’

Ever since the last honest guard in the Imperial City had been betrayed by his corrupt comrades and saved from execution by a Breton thief with a cowl that shouldn’t exist. It would have been easier for both of them to leave but they hadn’t and against all odds she was glad of that.

Sabar, the stranger who’d come bearing profitable tidings and suspicious motives looked up when Spar took the barstool beside her. Her eyes flicked between Spar and Uri but she only raised her glass in a welcoming toast that vaguely encompassed them both.

Spar could have ordered a drink and nursed it, beat around the bush, made some gruff small talk. She didn’t like the stranger though, and would rather get her questions answered and be done with her. She waved the barman away when he started making his way to them and he turned back with a shrug.

“You want to meet the Fox?” she asked.

There was no obvious reaction. “Now?” Sabar replied, taking another drink from her tankard, the yeasty smell of strong beer wafting around her.

“If it works for you.” Spar couldn’t help the snideness; she’d hoped for a more telling reaction.

Still giving away nothing, the stranger set her tankard down and tossed a handful of shiny coins at the bar and stood, nodding for Spar to lead the way.

* * *

Spar knew the city, above ground and below, every road, every alley, every winding turn and shadowy corner of the streets and the sewers and everything else. It was only the high places she left to Frezer and Gwinlorn, because to grow as it needed to the Thieves’ Guild had required faces among the highborn, the wealthy, the lords, and even the Thalmor themselves. And that would never have been Spar. Let the handsome Redguard and charming Bosmer schmooze with the upper crust, Spar had always been happiest in the shadows.

There was an old courtyard, surrounded by ramshackle buildings on all sides except for the small alley that led to it. It would have been a lovely, sheltered little garden once, but it was overgrown now and even the prickly weeds were dry and lifeless, starved of water and light.

The stranger hesitated about entering, wisely, since there was only the one, obvious entrance or exit but it wasn’t as though she was much better off, penned in the little alley. Her eyes swept the courtyard shadows warily, the way Uri looked over a new place, or even a familiar one, ever the soldier.

“There’s no one here,” she said.

“She’ll be here. Go on.” Spar nodded her chin towards the courtyard. 

* * *

Uri went in with her.

Spar ducked back into the alley, only far enough to not be visible for the space of time it took her to put on the mask. She could have done it right in front of the stranger; the mask wouldn’t have let her remember that Spar was the Fox even if she’d watched, but it messed with Uri a bit too and it had been hard enough to get him to remember.

Uri and her long-time friend, Idhasa, were the only ones who knew Spar as the Gray Fox and it was a tricky thing for even them to remember, through repeated tellings, repeated conversations. The enchantment on the mask was a persistent thing.

When she joined them in the courtyard the stranger reached for her bow and Uri reached for his matched ebony swords.

Spar just waited. She didn’t think the stranger had come all this way just to kill her.

The woman’s eyes swept the courtyard again, obviously peering into the darkness of the alley. Unless she was hiding a Night Eye enchantment she wouldn’t see anything back that way. “Where did the other one go?” she asked, voice low and calm.

“Business to attend,” Spar said, waiting.

With an eye on Uri and his swords the stranger slowly rehooked her bow across the quiver.

Uri didn’t put away his swords.

“You’re the Gray Fox?”

Spar nodded. “I am.”

“Why weren’t you at the meeting of the Guild leaders?”

“I’m retired. Consider yourself lucky I came out to meet you at all.”

The stranger nodded, not in agreement with Spar though, but with some unspoken thought in her own head.

Suddenly she swept a low bow. Uri tensed. Spar waited.

“It’s an honor to stand before a _legend_ of your status.”

“It is.”

Had the stranger’s lips twitched? Had that been the hint of wry smile, gone before it was fully formed?

Uri rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t come all this way to bargain with your guild,” she said as she straightened, her eyes, a shade paler than Spar’s, sweeping the cowl curiously. She’d get even less from it than her own face gave away but there was something else to that searching.

“We figured. That’s why I’m here.”

“To bargain?”

“Because I’m curious.”

Uri’s mouth tensed in frustration at the entirely honest admission, pulling tight around his tusks.

“Well, I will admit I did come to bargain, then. With you, specifically.”

“Your terms?”

The stranger did smile, and reached for the pouch at her waist.

Uri raised his swords and even Spar took a careful step back into the shadows of the alley. “Careful,” she warned.

“Peace,” the stranger soothed, in the practiced tone of an able barterer. She’d have fit it well among the Khajiit. “I just want to show you what I have to offer. I think you’ll be pleased. Especially as a retiree.”

She pulled a smaller bag from the larger one and with exaggerated motions tossed it between them.

Spar tensed, still looking for the trick, though her instincts weren’t screaming about danger yet, but when the parcel didn’t explode in a cloud of magic, or poisoned smoke she reached out with a toe and nudged it. There was a weight to it. Gold, or she was no thief at all.

With a glance at the stranger she swooped down and palmed the pouch. Heavier than she was used to dealing with as a cut purse. There had to be a few hundred in there at least, if it was really all coin. She pulled it open and held it up to the torchlight. There was the familiar gleam and as she shook the bag a bit she didn’t see any sign of anything else that had been tucked in with it to bulk it up.

She glanced at the stranger again. “Nice,” she said.

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. Nearly a frown, on that inexpressive face. “There’s more. I brought one hundred thousand septims. All for you.”

Her eyes did widen a little at that. It was an incredible sum. A prince’s ransom. Or perhaps the blood price of an emperor. “And what do you want for it?”

The stranger didn’t like that the Fox hadn’t gone starry-eyed at the offer, she could tell. It was hard to imagine that much gold, honestly, even if she hadn’t known there was a trick or trap attached.

For a moment Spar wondered if the other woman was so put-off by her lack of response that she wouldn’t continue. She still wanted to know why the stranger had come but it was impossible not to feel like she’d gotten a little of her own back. The smug satisfaction was short lived.

“I want the mask.”

She didn’t reach for it, though she wanted to. As if the stranger from Skyrim might have snatched it off her face somehow just by suggesting she wanted it. “You can’t have it.”

They stared at each other for a moment, neither understanding.

Finally—“What’s the price?”

“There isn’t one. Are you insane? The Gray Fox doesn’t sell her cowl.”

“But it gets passed along somehow. You’re not an elf. You’re not a daedra. _You’re_ not immortal—so you aren’t the only one who’s had it. The legends go back centuries. What do I have to do to get it next?”

She scoffed. “Have it bequeathed to you in my will?” A dangerous boast. She should have said something flippant about the stranger imagining she could understand the true nature of the Gray Fox.

“I can do that.” The stranger reached for her bow again. Even if she was a Dark Brotherhood assassin, good enough to take down the figure-head Emperor of Tamriel, Uri was fast and close and watchful and he’d grabbed her before she had her weapon out. She was slippery as a snake but Uri weighed at least twice as much as she did and certainly knew how to subdue a squirming little Breton, as Spar well knew.

She frowned, moving in. Uri leaned down towards his captive’s ear—Spar really didn’t like being on the _outside_ of that embrace—

“What do you want with the mask?”

She stopped. Level-headed and sensible as always, her love. She’d been so startled by the demand she hadn’t worked her way around to wondering why it had been made. Or why, if the dangerous woman was here for it, she hadn’t just tried to take it. Why bargain at all?

It was useless trying to escape when Uri’s arms were locked around you like that. Easier to move a mountain.

The stranger glared at her, brown Breton eyes on brown Breton eyes. They weren’t actually all that common in the homeland, at least not in the west. Most of Spar’s family had been blue- or gray-eyed.

“I need it.”

“No one _needs_ the mask,” Spar said. Uri’s gaze flicked to her. She ignored it.

“I promised it to a daedric prince.”

She winced. “If that’s true, it was very foolish of you.”

“Nocturnal.” Uri said.

The stranger’s face tensed, finally revealing herself.

But Spar didn’t understand. “Nocturnal? Why?” It was as much a question for Uri. Why would he know?

“Is it?” he asked. His prisoner’s face wasn’t visible to him, the way he was holding her.

“I’d say so,” Spar answered, when Sabar didn’t.

He pinned Spar with his gaze. “It’s Nocturnal’s cowl.”

She caught her breath for a moment. It didn’t matter. Why would it matter? …but to even consider that she’d been in possession of an honest-to-the-Aedra daedric artifact for all these years… that she was wearing something that had been worn by the Night Mistress…

If it was even true. It wasn’t true. It was just a mask, with some powerful mortal enchantments. A mask that protected itself and changed the minds and memories of those around it to suit its needs.

A mask that the daedric prince Nocturnal wanted back.

_Fuck._

“Yes,” the stranger said. “It’s Nocturnal’s cowl and she wants it back.”

“And she sent you to retrieve it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

A pause and a strange expression. Not guilt, exactly, but something like it.

“To fulfill a debt.”

“You should never have let yourself fall into debt to a daedric prince.”

“Perhaps. It was necessary at the time. A gift even, that I was given the opportunity. But I need to get out of it now and the price for my _soul_ is the mask.”

“To give back to Nocturnal?” Uri asked, as if it made a difference.

“Yes.”

“Well you can’t have it,” Spar said again, with only a twinge of guilt for so easily condemning another soul to the daedra.

Uri gave her _a look_ over their prisoner’s head. Words unspoken swirled behind his crimson-irised eyes. He’d never liked the mask. He’d never liked the Gray Fox, her sweet, stupid, _honorable_ guardsman. 

“She can’t have it!” she told him.

The other woman looked confused.

She switched her glare between them. She was supposed to give it up just because this stranger came asking? With some asinine story about delivering the mask to a daedric prince? Unlikely.

“Let’s see what else you have—”

The stranger was good, the straps of the bag on her waist reinforced, two obvious—to one of a similar bent—hidden slits in her tunic.

Uri sighed but tightened his grip when the other woman tried to squirm free, leaving Spar free to search her and that intriguing bag she carried.

Damn the woman, there was more gold. Not the hundred thousand she’d said she had—though that much would have been impossible to carry on her person at once—but a tidy fortune all on its own. There were also vials, small, in various shapes. Poisons and potions, and Spar only recognized a few of them. But that was all she had on her. Gold, potions, and lockpicks, nothing else that told her story.

She looked up at her, instincts suddenly prickling, like a cool breeze slipping between her armor and her skin. Uri had her, the stranger couldn’t escape, but—

“Fuck—Tom!” she shouted, throwing herself back into the shadows, dropping Sabar’s bags to lighten her load and free her hands for her daggers.

Uri dropped the stranger, or at least changed his grip on her, releasing her but jerking her by her wrist back into the dry sedge along the garden wall.

And Shiny Tom, now Spring-Heeled Tom, fell from the sky like a ridiculous, over-sized, multicolored flea.

They didn’t know quite how he’d been turned into a vampire, whether it had happened on purpose, in a last bid to hold onto his crumbling power as the Thieves’ Guild asserted itself, or whether he’d run afoul of one by accident and been ‘lucky’ enough to survive it. Between his new very literal thirst for blood and the enchanted boots she’d retrieved for him when he’d still been king of the underworld and had held Uri’s life in his hands, he was a one-man plague on the city.

And he remembered enough of his former life to know he hated the Thieves’ Guild and Spar and Uri and most especially the Gray Fox. They’d been hunting him for two years but there had been no sighting in nearly three months and they’d thought he’d might have either died for good or left the city.

Proof of their false hopes, he grinned, a bloody, fanged-tooth smile. He’d been a pretty Imperial, but he wasn’t so pretty as a vampire, slim turning gaunt, pale turning sallow, and those lovely, lying, soulful eyes gone hellish red—with none of the charm of Uri’s deep and lovely crimson.

“Hullo, Gray Fox!” he said, in that scratchy approximation of his once lyrical, near-hypnotic tones. There was still something to his voice, a force behind it, but it wasn’t beautiful. “Oh-ho! And what do you have here?”

He stooped and snatched up everything she’d taken from the stranger, the pouches, the bags, and _all_ the gold. He shook the bag and peered down into it.

She watched him, her daggers out. Dimly she was aware that the stranger had broken away from Uri and had her bow out, her eyes pinned on the more obvious threat that chortled to himself as he stood alone in the center of the courtyard.

“Well—pretty, pretty!” he said, and looked at her, grinning madly. “Why don’t we call this my cut? Since you haven’t been keeping up your _payments_.”

“No one pays to you anymore, you old corpse,” she said.

He hissed and edged closer to her. She couldn’t see them around Tom, but she knew Uri’d have his swords out and her heart thudded. _They could do this_. It was the perfect setup: Tom between them, eyes on her, Uri at his back.

Her orc preferred his battles more straightforward but Tom was a vampire and had been preying on those foolish and unlucky enough to be out on the streets at night since he’d been turned. The guild and the street kids and the beggars had all retreated to the safety of the sewers but there were still prostitutes and the city guard and even helpless citizens unlucky enough to be caught out at night. Not to mention it put a damper on thieving. He’d only caught two at it, but that was two too many of their people.

Two years they’d been trying, if she could just keep him distracted—she flipped one of her daggers in her hand, a showy, pointless gesture, but his head snapped to watch the silver flash and fall, like an animal, curious at the movement.

She held the other dagger out towards him though, in case he had any ideas about rushing her. With the boots he could move almost faster than the eye could track him, and he could leap in any direction, even straight up into the air, curse her own thieving hands for delivering the boots to him.

After all this time—she could see Uri’s swords raised above Tom as the Imperial vampire stalked towards her.

But she saw his attention catch on something to her right. She didn’t dare turn her head on him, even if she didn’t think he was canny enough in this state to pull a trick like that. Instinct though… or a premonition. She felt like every hair on her body stood on end and a wave of sick dread made her skin tight and her head spin.

He tensed. He was about to leap, not towards, but away. And not from her.

“Don’t!” she said—too late.

An arrow flew and Tom leapt and _Uri_ went down.

The curses that wanted to fly died on her lips as she scrambled to his side.

She’d never remember going to her knees or pulling his head onto her lap as she tore at his useless armor to examine the wound the damned assassin’s arrow had left, slipping between the ebony plates to pierce through precious flesh.

She couldn’t even make herself say his name, not when his head was lolling and his mouth was slack and he was obviously past hearing her. But she’d seen wounds before and his wasn’t bad enough to have felled him so quickly and so completely.

It was his arm that had been struck. The possibility of bleeding to death was there of course. There could be damage to the bone, to nerves, to say nothing of the muscle. If he’d been in shock, if he couldn’t use his arm, that would be one thing, but the arrow strike to his arm shouldn’t have brought her big, powerful orc down like this one had.

“What was on the arrow?” she hissed, through gritted teeth.

His breathing was thready, weak and labored but the arrow was still piercing him through, stemming some of the blood loss. As she’d feared, he hadn’t stirred at all even in answer to the desperation in her voice.

“…poison,” the other Breton said, redundantly, as she came to stand over them.

Spar ripped the cowl off and shoved it in her pocket so she could glare up at her without the obnoxious pink glow of its Detect Life enchantment. She didn’t try to hide her tears. “Obviously. And the cure?”

Sabar blinked and frowned and shook her head, lines of tension furrowing her brow as she struggled against that reordering of her world. Her gaze swept the courtyard, not for Tom, but for the Gray Fox, who certainly wasn’t the other Breton woman cradling her fallen lover in the blood spattered dust.

“ _The fucking cure?_ ” she demanded again.

The other woman’s eyes did flick skyward then, the way Tom had gone. “Our friend took it.”

“Run back to the tavern and tell them Uri’s hurt.”

Spar waited for an argument but the other woman only nodded and disappeared back into the alley. She didn’t know if Sabar was really going to get them help but she couldn’t have made herself leave him there.

* * *

Leif and Rogavir came thundering into the courtyard, their heavy steps heralding their approach. “What happened to him?” Rogavir growled, already on his knees, checking Uri over.

He was a battle-hardened warrior, a veteran of countless bloody skirmishes and loyal down to his bones. A medic in the way all soldiers got to be, to protect themselves and their comrades, she could tell he was quickly as lost as she was as to the cause of Uri’s lack of response. And as quickly on to the real problem.

She’d kept his arm with the arrow in it elevated. She’d been afraid to leave it in and let it keep poisoning him, but she was even more afraid he’d die more prosaically, bleeding out in her arms, if she’d tried to pull it out.

“She shot him,” she said, nodding her chin towards the Breton who’d followed them back into the courtyard.

Rogavir was a friend of Uri’s from down by the docks, but his slimmer brother Leif was Guild, through and through. He drew his sword and took a swing at Sabar—that the damned assassin easily ducked and evaded.

“Stand down,” Spar told him, grudgingly, as much as she wanted to see the treacherous bitch lose her head. “We need her for the antidote.”

* * *

She let the brothers take him because she couldn’t. They tied a tourniquet around his arm above the wound, to try to slow the spread of the poison in case it wasn’t as late as it seemed for that, and to slow the steady seep of blood from between the plates of his armor, but then it was all a hurried rush to get him down to the safety of the sewers and the Guild doctor.

She’d thought Sabar might try to run, especially after Leif’s attack and her own indifference to it, but the other woman followed them quietly back to their stronghold below the city.

Neither of them followed the men into Szrissit’s apothecary, though it tore at her let them carry Uri away from her.

“Is Doc going to be able to counteract the poison?” she asked, when they were alone.

The Breton’s lips twisted in what she might have taken for guilt in anyone else and she shook her head. “Unlikely.”

“How long do we have?”

“It depends on him. On how strong—”

“He’s very strong.”

“Sunrise, perhaps?”

Hours then. If that.

“We’ll hunt Tom. We’ll get your pack and the antidote.” She inhaled, still waiting for the argument. None was offered and the other woman only nodded. Still. “And if he lives you can have the damned cowl.”

Sabar’s eyes widened, but then narrowed in suspicion.

Spar could practically hear the unspoken question: who was she to offer the Gray Fox’s cowl? And this after she’d taken it off right in front of her.

She didn’t care. Uri was the only thing that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> ...So here's the deal: although I've been playing Oblivion on and off since... it came out (what?), I only actually finally bothered to give Skyrim a shot this last summer. Spar was supposed to be Sparrow, my Breton archer/thief in Skyrim, and she very much ends up with Vilkas. I was toying with her backstory, and why she'd hate the Emperor enough to join the Dark Brotherhood for a chance at killing him and I'd thought hey, previous boyfriend in Cyrodiil killed by corrupt Imperial officials, easy, done, the end. Then I actually wrote their first meeting, just out of boredom... and I couldn't kill Uri, definitely not just so I could toss her at Vilkas. So Sparrow became Spar, the full-blooded Breton who stayed in Cyrodiil, and also Sabar, the half-blooded Breton/Forsworn who took off for Skyrim and eventually ends up with Vilkas. But to free herself from her Nightingale duties (particularly the eternal, after-death ones), Sabar promises Nocturnal she'll get her cowl back, which sends her back to Cyrodiil and right to Spar. This is probably as far as this is going though, unless I get a *real* bug to keep going with it.


End file.
